Seven minutes

A didactic history of the animated cartoon from the days before Mickey Mouse to the rise of Hanna-Barbera's 137 television programs. Klein's history maintains a sharp focus, it's interested in how and why the shape of the seven-minute cartoon short changed from Felix the Cat to Disney and Warners to the UPA cartoons of the 50's. What modes of space and entertainment have different cartoons drawn inspiration from? According to Klein, the jokes in the earliest cartoons depended on spatial transformations between foreground characters and background objects. Walt Disney put more emphasis on realistic melodrama, full animation and the illusions of the multi plane camera.